WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Technology to check in voters was not working working properly in Durham, North Carolina, this morning, forcing elections officials to handle check-in by hand.

This is just one of a handful of areas with machines or technology breaking down, and problems have been reported in Virginia, Georgia and North Carolina, too, according to the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University and the Verified Voting Foundation.

At this early point, the problems should not interfere with the ability to get accurate vote counts, authorities said.

"We have a high degree of confidence that the ballots will be able to be counted" by the end of the day, Verified Voting president Pamela Smith told cleveland.com during a conference call with reporters and a coalition of voting rights groups.

Other issues reported include a shortage of Spanish-language interpreters in the Miami-Dade area of Florida.

There also have been reports of people intimidating voters, including a police officer in St. Louis, Missouri, who may have lacked authority to be in a polling place. Unauthorized people, even police officers, can create intimidating environments, said the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law.

The officer has left in St. Louis, the lawyers committee said, adding it is monitoring other situations and will work to legally remove any impediments to, or harassment of, voters.

Outside a public library used for voting in Hollywood, Florida, a group of people were reported as menacing as they approached one woman's car. She drove away, the lawyers' committee said. (The lawyers committee said later today that the incident actually happened Sunday night, around the end of Florida's early voting period.)

A similar report involving a man possibly harassing voters in an African-American precinct of Jacksonville, Florida, has been resolved, the lawyers committee said.

By late morning, the committee and its partners had received about 5,500 phone calls with concerns about access, waiting times, equipment, voter identification and other issues.

In Durham, the problem was initially reported as broken voting machines. It turned out to be a problem with the electronic "poll book," or registry of voters. This affected the ability to check in voters quickly and efficiently, the Verified Voting Foundation said.

But backup methods for this and issues elsewhere, including handling check-in or ballots by hand, so far have worked, Smith said. She said that election officials across the country so far have been able to rely on their "Plan B" or "Plan C" with success.

"There are broken machines, and everything is being done by hand now," Erin Durkin, an election monitor with Democracy NC, told the Raleigh News & Observer this morning. "The Durham Board of Elections said it's trying to resolve things by midday."